Subscribe

Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • Support Grows for President Obama’s Materials Genome Initiative

    Posted by Tom Kalil and Cyrus Wadia on November 14, 2011 at 2:58 PM EDT

    During his June 24 speech on advanced manufacturing, President Obama unveiled the Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness (MGI), an ambitious new plan to double the speed with which the United States discovers, develops, and manufactures new materials.  Since then, a growing number of companies, communities, universities, national labs, and scientific societies have made concrete commitments in support of the MGI.  Below are some of the commitments that have been made.  If you want to get involved, please send a note to mgi@ostp.gov.

    read the rest
    Learn more about Technology

  • Make It In America: Maintaining Our Lead in Manufacturing

    Posted by David Hart on November 10, 2011 at 5:17 PM EDT

    Last week the White House recognized a number of people who "Make It In America" — individuals and businesses working to create high-quality jobs in America.  Companies like Lighting Science Group, a leading LED lighting company, and UEC, which manufactures the GREENS power system for the US Marine Corps, show why the United States remains the largest manufacturing economy in the world.  We salute these Champions of Change and everyone else who is “making it in America”!

    Revitalizing American manufacturing is a top priority for the Obama Administration.  As President Obama has said, “If we want a robust, growing economy, we need a robust, growing manufacturing sector.” In its June 2011 report on "Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing," the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended that the President launch a “whole of government” effort to encourage advanced manufacturing. A keystone outcome was the launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), a government-university-industry collaboration that was announced by the President at Carnegie-Mellon University in June. 

    read the rest
    Learn more about Economy, Technology

  • Open Innovation for Heroes – Introducing the Veterans Job Bank

    Posted by Aneesh Chopra on November 7, 2011 at 3:44 PM EDT

    Today, the Obama Administration launched the Veterans Job Bank, a new search tool designed to help connect veterans with employers.  The Job Bank works by bringing jobs listings directly to veterans—instead of the other way around—via a search widget that provides a single window into the myriad job boards, social media platforms, and corporate employment sites that are currently spread across the Internet.

    read the rest
    Learn more about Economy, Innovations, Technology, Veterans

  • Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data and Scientific Publications

    Posted by Phil Larson on November 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM EDT

    The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed by President Obama earlier this year, calls upon OSTP to coordinate with agencies to develop policies that assure widespread public access to and long-term stewardship of the results of federally funded unclassified research. Towards that goal, OSTP last week released two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting public input on long term preservation of and public access to the results of federally funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

    OSTP previously conducted a public consultation about policy options for expanding public access to federally funded peer-reviewed scholarly articles (the full set of comments can be viewed here).  The current RFIs take that process another step, seeking further guidance on access to scientific publications and initiating a parallel process relating to digital data, as called for in the COMPETES Act.

    OSTP has established two interagency policy groups under the National Science and Technology Council—the Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications and the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data—to identify the specific objectives and public interests that need to be addressed by any policies in these two areas. The groups will take into account the varying missions, types of data, and dissemination models associated with the range of Federal science agencies and scientific disciplines, and will help OSTP address other public access requirements of COMPETES—keeping in mind the need to follow statutory requirements and best practices for protecting personal privacy, proprietary interests, intellectual property rights, and author attribution.

    We highly encourage stakeholders to consider the questions in the RFIs and provide comments to the questions by email to digitaldata@ostp.gov and publicaccess@ostp.gov. OSTP will make all comments available on its website, including the names of the authors and their institutional affiliations soon after the conclusion of the comment periods, so please do not include any proprietary or confidential information when responding to the RFIs. All comments are due by January 2, 2012.

    You can see the RFI on public access here and the RFI on digital data here.

  • Crowdfunding: Democratizing Investment for Entrepreneurs

    Posted by Tom Kalil and Doug Rand on November 4, 2011 at 5:38 PM EDT

    Yesterday, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 407-17, the House of Representatives passed a bill supported by President Obama that would allow small companies to raise capital through “crowdfunding.”

    Crowdfunding is essentially raising little bits of money from a big group of people over the Internet.  The Internet has made it easier for political candidates and charitable organizations to turn lots of small contributions into large dollars, and in recent years some entrepreneurs have found success raising money this way to grow some very innovative companies.  But unless the money collected is a pure donation, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probably has to get involved.

    That’s not a bad thing – we rely on the SEC and state regulators to protect investors against fraud and ensure a smoothly functioning marketplace.  But current rules, designed for a pre-Internet era, make crowdfunding difficult for entrepreneurs who want to connect with investors, not just donors. 

    read the rest
    Learn more about Economy, Innovations, Startup America, Technology

  • Smart Buildings = Better Buildings

    Posted by Nick Sinai on November 4, 2011 at 9:18 AM EDT

    In June, the surprise stars of a White House event on smart grid policy were a couple of high-school seniors who had convinced their school to finance the installation of submetering technology and software that allowed them to measure their school’s energy consumption in unprecedented detail. They discovered that the air conditioning was needlessly running in the gym at night, which led to an operational change that helped the school earn a 250% return on investment.

    What those students discovered was the potential benefit of submetering—the use of monitoring and measurement technologies to provide real-time information about resource use that can help pinpoint variations in performance, optimize automated building systems, and encourage building managers and occupants to adopt energy-conserving behaviors.

    Today, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC)—a cabinet-level interagency group of scientists and engineers—released a new report (pdf) that recommends systematic consideration of submetering technologies that can yield up-to-date, finely grained snap shots of energy and water use in commercial and residential buildings to drive energy efficiency and capture the advantages of a modernized electric power grid. The approach is complementary to the Obama Administration’s Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, released in March 2011, which stressed the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut energy bills by increasing the efficiencies of homes and buildings.

    The report, Submetering of Building Energy and Water Usage: Guidance and Recommendations of the Subcommittee on Buildings Technology Research and Development, concludes that submetering can dramatically improve building performance and reduce resource consumption. Submetering devices can be deployed at successively finer levels of resolution, from individual buildings and rooms down to specific building systems or water and electrical outlets.

    And while the return on investment (ROI) for submeters depends on specific energy-efficiency strategies that may vary by climate, building type, and other factors, "numerous case studies provide evidence that the ROI can be significant,” the report concludes. “Further, submetering provides the necessary infrastructure for more advanced conservation and efficiency techniques.”

    The increased use of submeters—especially when combined with software solutions developed and deployed by innovators, entrepreneurs and students—can play a significant role in the President’s Better Buildings Initiative to make commercial facilities 20 percent more efficient by 2020. 

    Nick Sinai is Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer

    Learn more about Energy and Environment, Technology